I don’t know if I ever fully understood the meaning of the word “petrified” until I stayed in that house with my son for the rest of that night.
I was certain whoever was looking for that money had somehow found me. I just couldn’t figure out how. I stared at that bill for long minutes, the hairs raised on my arms, trying to come to grips with whether I was reading something into this, or if not, just what it meant.
It meant that someone out there knew I had it.
It also meant that Rollie McMahon hadn’t hung himself at all.
The sweats came over me, staring at that bill, Ben Franklin’s knowing smile. I almost threw up in fear.
I ran around the house and made sure every outside door was locked. And double-locked. I pulled Brandon into his room and made him stay there. I threw the house back in some kind of order as best I could.
I didn’t want Elena to know.
How could anyone have gotten to me? It was a message; that was sure. But it was also a message that whoever it was wasn’t completely certain. Otherwise I was pretty sure I’d be just like Rollie. Tortured until I divulged something. Dead.
Brandon too.
Of course there was also the very real possibility that I was imagining all this. I sat down in the kitchen, going over and over it again. Had anyone actually been up there? It surely didn’t seem so. Nothing else was disturbed. Truth was, I wasn’t 100 percent sure where I had even left the ring. Think, Hilary … Could that bill have been mine? Maybe Elena had put it there. I did usually pay her in hundreds.
Think. What you do next may determine whether you and Brandon make it out alive.
Part of me wanted to grab Brandon and just get the hell out. Go anywhere. To a hotel. To a friend’s.
To the police.
But if I did, what did I really have to tell them? A break-in that may well have been just that. A murder that all the facts said was just a suicide. A ring that wasn’t stolen. In plain sight. A random hundred-dollar bill.
A warning that only I would understand.
And then what, turn myself in and admit what I’d done? Who knew where that would lead? I’d likely be arrested. I might be separated from Brandon. Over what? All these things that didn’t fully add up to anything. I kept coming back to the fact that whoever had broken in here couldn’t be 100 percent sure. Otherwise they wouldn’t have sent me a warning. They’d have had me up on the boards like poor Rollie.
They’d be trying to find their money.
I made Brandon sleep next to me. I lay down with him in my bed, my arms around him, maybe squeezing him a bit too tightly, my heart throbbing. The last thing he said before drifting off was to mutter sleepily, “Mommy, don’t call the elephants in.”
“The who?”
“The elephants, Mommy. Like at the circus.” The reluctant heroes.
“No, honey …” I put my arms under the sheets and hugged him. “Don’t you worry, we won’t. We won’t call them.”
As soon as he was asleep, I gathered my nerve, grabbed a light, and went outside to the back deck. I went down the steps and found under the gardening table the key I’d hidden that opened the door to the crawl space.
Which at least meant that no one had been down here—that the money was still intact.
No one knew for sure.
Which also meant if someone wanted me to know they were on to me, they were likely trying to scare me into doing something reckless and showing my hand. Like maybe running with the money or re-hiding it somewhere.
Which meant they might be watching the house even now.
I looked around into the woods and felt myself shudder with fear.
If … I forced myself to come back to reason, if this wasn’t all just what it appeared to be on the surface: Part of the string of Westchester home burglaries. Stuff was missing. My iPad. Some antiques. My files were all broken into. Someone was clearly searching for valuables. It just seemed they hadn’t made it upstairs.
Back in the house I scanned the outside from the kitchen window, pushing back the feeling that I was being watched, that someone out there was just waiting for me to make a move. That I should just put the satchel out on the doorstep and let them take it, and then the whole thing would go away.
No, it wouldn’t go away.
I’d already used a healthy chunk of it, $60,000. What about that?
What I kept coming back to over and over was how anyone could know. I hadn’t given Rollie my real name. And I was sure I’d left no trace of myself back at that crime scene. Even if someone had dusted for prints in Kelty’s car, they might have found mine. But my prints weren’t even in the system. And who was I kidding, this wasn’t any kind of official investigation. The police likely didn’t know a thing about any missing money. If they did, there would be flashing lights in my driveway and cops at the front door. Not upended furniture and an open back door.
I lay there, my son breathing innocently next to me, going over what options I had.
The clock read a quarter to two.
Clearly I’d committed a crime. I’d taken the money. Possibly from a crime scene, because at that point it might well have been a crime scene until foul play was ruled out. I’d tampered with evidence. Who knew where a half million dollars in the front seat might have taken the crash investigation?
Maybe a prosecutor would forgive me for that. I’d never committed a crime before. And anyone might have been tempted. But then I’d used part of it. I laundered it through the banking system. That was a federal crime. Surely that wouldn’t just be brushed aside.
And worse, what I did might have led to the death of a completely innocent man.
My thoughts whirled in a hundred different directions. I felt the urge to run to the toilet and hurl.
I tried to calm myself, in the face of everything, by the fact that I didn’t know for certain if any of this was even true. What if I went to the police and turned in the money—“What money?” they would want to know. No one had any idea there had even been a crime. I’d have to return whatever I’d spent. Milton Farms might be willing to give it back. But Brandon would be out of there that same day. And I’d be a felon. I’d be risking my son being taken from me. I was all he had.
And even if I did turn myself in, even if the district attorney overlooked all that I’d done, if someone was truly hunting me, for the money, if my fears about Rollie and tonight’s break-in were true, then the people responsible still wouldn’t have what they wanted.
Their money.
The police would have it.
They’d killed Rollie just on the suspicion that he had it. Knowing I had taken it and lost it, what would they do to me …?
My thoughts caromed wildly. Nothing ever looks very pretty in the middle of the night. I watched the clock turn three.
I decided I had four choices.
One was to just wait and see. Do nothing. It might all blow over or never ever come to pass.
Of course, if I did that, I could also wake up with a gun at my head one morning. And put Brandon at grave risk. At best, I’d never have a calm night’s sleep again in my life.
Second, I could take off with the money and move out to Montana or something. Take Brandon out of his school. Leave Judy and Neil. No, that was just the hour talking. Crazy. My life had been ripped apart at Brandon’s age when my folks died. How could I possibly do it to him?
My third option was to turn myself in. Hire a lawyer; work out some kind of deal. As a first offender they might forgive much of what I’d done.
The problem was the very real possibility that the only actual crime that had been committed so far was mine. That the break-in tonight was exactly what it was—the work of the same people who had done the other three. That Rollie hadn’t been murdered, he’d killed himself.
That I’d be turning myself in for nothing.
I could end up in jail. Then who would take care of my son? That would destroy him. His world would fall apart in an instant. He counted on me. I’d be bringing on him the same terror and abandonment I’d felt as a child. Exactly what I always tried to protect him from. Not to mention that if the money was illicitly gained, whoever wanted it back, whoever had killed Rollie, wasn’t about to let me get off with just a few months in jail. They’d come after me.
It was going on four when a last option entered my mind. One that just kept nudging itself forward.
I had to find out where that money had come from. And who might be looking for it. Was it dirty? Were they bad guys? Did I have to be afraid? Where had Joe Kelty gone that night?
Before I completely tore our lives apart.
Not to mention, it occurred to me, that there might be someone else out there I had put at risk. Who, like Rollie, had no idea there had even been a crime.
Which all explained why at a quarter to four in the morning my thoughts drifted to Joe Kelty’s funeral.